Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., slammed the Electoral College as an "obsolete" system from the 18th century that is deadly for Americans.
Raskin spoke with The Free Speech project at the Riggs Library in Washington D.C. on Friday. The congressman expounded on a variety of topics, particularly his efforts to discredit and ultimately circumvent the Electoral College in the name of protecting American democracy.
"We passed the nation’s first National Popular Vote Interstate Compact," he said, touting his work. "We initiated that, we’re now more than two thirds of the way there, because it’s 2024. How about it’s time to start electing the president the way we elect mayors and representatives and senators and governors? Whoever gets the most votes, wins."
He contrasted this with the Electoral College, which he argued can "get you killed."
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"Rather than a convoluted, antique, obsolete system from the 18th century, which these days can get you killed as nearly it did on January 6, 2021," he claimed.
"I mean, we were meeting [at the Capitol] just because of the formalities of the 12th amendment which say that you’ve got to have a joint session to count the Electoral College votes sent in by the governors under the certificates of ascertainment," he said. "But we knew who had won the election. Everybody knew who had won the election, but we’re still going through these 18th century rituals and that’s what gave Donald Trump the opportunity to invoke the mob- ‘come here, we’ll be wild' and then tell them to go and ‘fight and fight like hell’ or they wouldn’t have a country anymore."
Raskin then argued that candidates should not win the White House if they lose the popular vote.
"So, look, we've had five popular vote losers in American history become president, twice in this century alone, in 2000 and 2016," he said. "And I think the vast majority of American people think we should be electing the president just by having an election in seeing who gets the most votes, rather than this convoluted, rickety system where it all comes down to a handful of states, six or seven states instead of everybody’s vote counting equally everywhere in the country."
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